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The Adirondack Council today released a 28-page handbook on how to protect the pure waters of New York’s 9,300-square-mile Adiron-dack Park and other rural areas from threats such as acid rain, climate change, airborne mercury, road salt contamination, invasive species, major water diversions and over-development.
“The booklet, entitled ‘Adirondack Waters: Resource at Risk,’ is not a recounting of our failures, but a blueprint for future success,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian Houseal. “It offers advice based on one unfaltering principle that must guide all of our actions: there is no such thing as new water,” he said.
Copies of the publication are available from the Adirondack Council for free, by calling 1-888-873-2240 or by emailing info@adirondackcouncil.org. An electronic version is available online at www.adirondack-council.org.
The Adirondack Park contains more than 2,800 lakes and ponds, and more than a thousand miles of navigable rivers, fed by nearly 30,000 miles of brooks and streams, according to Houseal.
“At this time of year, it almost seems like there is too much water in the Adirondacks. But when you look around at the rest of the world, it only takes a moment to realize how fortunate we are to live next to one of the world’s largest sources of fresh, pure water,” he said.
“The rivers and streams of the Adirondack Park radiate out like the spokes on a wheel, contributing clean water to the Mohawk River and Erie Canal, Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, Lake Champlain and New York Harbor, via the Hudson River,” said Houseal. “Millions of Americans rely upon the waters of the Adirondack Park. That includes the citizens of Utica and Amsterdam, who draw all of their drinking water from Adirondack lakes, as well as the citizens of Poughkeepsie for whom the strong flow of the Hudson prevents salt water from reaching their filtration plant. We who love the Adirondacks have an obligation to protect this central resource for the rest of our neighbors on this side of North America,” Houseal said.
“All of Upstate New York’s major industries of the 19th Century, including International Paper, relied on Adirondack rivers for their power, water, and the transportation of goods to market — for their very existence,” said Donna Wadsworth, Manager of Communications and Environmental Affairs at International Paper’s Ticonderoga plant (located inside the Park). “Without these waters, there would have been no industrial revolution in this part of the country. Today, the park’s hydro-power dams still produce more than 260 megawatts of electricity for the rest of the state. In the coming centuries, these waters will continue to be the focus of tourism, and will be a large part of the reason people come here to visit and keep coming back,” she said.
Houseal said that the transition from industry to tourism in the Adirondacks allowed the Park’s rivers to recover from early abuses and pollution, leaving the Park with a tremendous supply of very clean water. But he also noted a number of threats that must be addressed.
“This new publication will be a useful tool for anyone who wants to protect a fresh water supply in a rural area,” said Houseal.
“Climate change and airborne mercury are problems that affect people all over the world. Invasive species are all too common a problem.
Inadequate treatment of waste water, development within sensitive watersheds, road salt runoff and disagreements about how water can be diverted to new places are sparking conflicts around the United States. We think we can help,” he said.
Each chapter of the guidebook explains the threats to pure water, then shows how advocacy organizations, such as the Adirondack Council, can work with citizens and government officials to correct problems and forestall impending threats. Each chapter also contains a section entitled “What We Can Do.”
“It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do for a living, everyone can take action to prevent water pollution,” said Houseal.
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ADIRONDACK PARK WATER FACTS:
• The Great Sacandaga Lake, created in 1930 to prevent the Hudson River from flooding Cohoes, Albany and Troy, is 29 miles long and holds back an average of 283 billion gallons of water from the Hudson and Sacandaga river watersheds. It is not the Park’s largest lake.
• In 1883, New York City’s mayor appointed a committee to investigate the construction of a canal from the Adirondacks to the city to supply up to 300 billion gallons of drinking water per day.
• The Beech-Nut baby food plant proposed for Montgomery County (a replacement for the Canajoharie plant) plans to purchase one million gallons of water per day from the City of Amsterdam, whose supply is located inside the Adirondack Park at Ireland Vly and Steele Reservoir, Saratoga County.
• The combined volume of just four Adirondack Park lakes (Lake George, Great Sacandaga, Tupper Lake and Raquette Lake) exceeds 1 trillion gallons.
